Today many countries face a severe water scarcity issue due to the climate change, the growing population and the agriculture area extension. Some of them shifted from surface and groundwater management to sea water desalination production assuming very high financial and environmental costs.
What are the brakes to this strategy ? Is there an alternative development model for semi arid and arid countries ?
Desalination of seawater is an important issue for the future of arid regions. For a production cost that can drop to around $ 0.5 per cubic meter for recent projects (by reverse osmosis and all charges included: operating cost, amortization of the installation, operator's profit, etc.), it is possible to solve the problems of lack of potable water in many countries. In the case of use for human consumption, seawater desalination is a technique that is now reliable and less expensive than the technique known as wastewater recycling. It even becomes profitable in developed countries which generally do not lack water, in certain specific situations (for example tourist islands).
But desalination has multiple drawbacks:
1. High energy cost.
2. Increased carbon footprint when the energy used comes from fossil fuels; to remedy this, pilot desalination projects based on renewable energies are being carried out by four industrial groups, including the French Veolia and Suez Environnement, in the Abu Dhabi region, under the leadership of the Sustainable City Institute of Masdar; the emirate has a sustainable desalination plant project of 150,000 m3 / day; in Saudi Arabia, the Spanish Abengoa will co-develop a solar plant of 60,000 m3 / day to supply the city of Al Khafji; both countries also rely on nuclear power.
3. Discharge of brines concentrated at double the natural salinity at sea or injected into the soil; thus, the discharge of effluents very loaded with salt in the Arabian Sea caused an explosion in the level of salinity of its waters; in some areas, the seabed has become deserts.
4. Discharge of hot water at sea in the case of distillation.
5. Use of chemicals to clean the membranes (chlorine).
6. Traces of copper escaping from the installations; chemical corrosion of piping installations.
7. No specific legislation concerning the drinkability of the water resulting from these treatments.
8. The abstraction of water from the sea can modify maritime flows.
9. Risk of damage to the seabed in terms of flora and fauna.
Regards
Hello,
Good postulate and relevant issue to talk about.
The importance of the desalination to the countries under arid and saharian climate can't be denied. The water strategies in the middle east countries for example, are based on the desalination resorts dispatched in many coastal areas. The aim is to find the solutions and the best ways to manage the hydric scarcity aggraving year by year. Here in Morocco, the government is giving the ultimate interest to desalination technology and it has constructed some resorts and planning to add other projects in several points.
Seeing all the global changes that our earth facing, we must then give more focus on the oceanic water displaying the 2/3 general occupation of our living land.
Regardless its cons, I see that the pros are much higher, and we should improve them. Besides, only the scientific research on the field could approach all the possible ways to reach the highest level of the profitability about the desalination process.
Many thanks to you.
Stay safe.
The desalination is incurring more expensive suitable for gulf countries suffering due to lack of water.
The desalination process is recommended when do not have another alternatives of managing the water requirements.
Apart from the that some landlocked countries can exploit the the ground water sources including curing process that would support more beneficial to the water consumption and utility point of view.
Professor Oda of Japan has applied the strategy to clean the water by white powder that could be a chemical process in Somalia rural communities are benefitting. Kindly watch the YouTubes.
Anyhow there are many strategies to have an alternative or substitute for managing the water requirements.
Yes this has happened in Kenya. Kindly check on this piece of work.
https://thisisafrica.me/lifestyle/desalination-plant-in-kenyas-coast-a-case-study-in-addressing-water-crisis/
il n'y a pas de solutions définitives dans la vie, la résolution d'un problème crée au moins un autre problème. Le dessalement est une alternative (grande importance académique) à combiner avec les autres alternatives dont la gestion de l'eau pluviale est la plus importante.
In land-locked regions where there is no other freshwater resources, rainwater harvesting and desalinization of sea water are the only alternatives. These two methodologies have been very successfully implemented in Lakshadweep Islands within the Arabian Sea, south-west of India. As far as brine disposal and fuel usage related problems explained by Dr. Bachir, the desalinization plants in Lakshadweep uses differential temperature of the sea water with depth as the driving force to create thermo-dynamic conditions to vaporise and condense the sea water to freshwater. The resultant brine is negligible, as this technique produces 1 litre of freshwater from 1000 litres of seawater. This type of desalinization plant has been implemented in Lakshadweep Islands by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), India.
The roof-tops of the residential houses have been used to conserve the rainwater (annual rainfall is about 1500 mm) through proper filtration mechanism in cement tanks for domestic uses (mainly drinking and cooking) to reduce the dependence on freshwater by the individual house holds.
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